Guilt Trip
by Hecatia10
Summary: Sam and Dean come across a case involving a hunter they worked with when they were kids. Now that hunter has beheaded his father while yelling about monsters; but did he just go mad, or is there an actual case? If so, what is the creature, and are Sam and Dean strong enough to stop it? Series style monster-of-the-week story. Set late-ish series 7, after Repo Man.
1. The Case

**Guilt Trip**

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__Setting: Season 7  
Between __"Repo Man" __and __"Out with the Old"__  
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Dean blinked awake, squinting slightly in the early morning light, but not yet lifting his head from where it rested on the Impala's glass window. Sam sat beside him in the drivers seat, coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other, frowning at whatever article had caught his attention. A few seconds passed before Dean sat up, uncrossing his arms and stretching as much as he could inside the car.

"Ugh. What time is it?"

"About 4."

"Well I hope you got one of those for me Sammy." Dean motioned towards the coffee.

"Yep, and one better." He nodded his head towards the back seat without taking his eyes off the paper.

Dean looked over his shoulder and reached back to pick up the plastic shopping bag, yanking apart the handles.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" A rare smile that reached his eyes appeared as he pulled a plastic container out of the bag. Inside: apple pie. "Oh yes. Come to papa."

Sam had torn his eyes away from the paper to watch his brother, smiling at his excitement and enjoying Dean's pleasure second hand. Dean opened the plastic quickly, grabbing the plastic fork inside and digging in within seconds.

"Mmmm," he closed his eyes, talking with full cheeks "This is good."

Sam smiled, eyes back on the paper.

"Where'd you get this?"

"We drove passed a 24hr gas station a few miles back."

"I didn't think there'd be another for... wait where are we now?"

"A mile or so off the California/Oregon border."

"That's..." Dean paused "Did you sleep at all last night?"

Sam shuffled in his seat "Uh, I may have gotten maybe two hours... ish..."

"Come on man!" Dean was unimpressed.

Sam rolled his eyes "Sorry, Lucifer was giving me a hard time. But I'm fine." He looked straight at Dean as he talked, as if this would convince his brother that he was telling the truth. Dean stared straight back.

"No, really, how are you holding up."

Sam looked away in frustration. "I'm handling it. He's..." Dean noticed his brothers eyes flick to a seemingly empty spot in the air above the Impala's front. "It's fine."

Dean chose to let Sam get away with the lie.

"Whatever." His eyes flicked to the back seat where John Winchester's journal was lying half open. "So... unless you've been reading Dad's journal for kicks, and considering that you've been frowning at that newspaper since I woke up, I'm assuming you've got something."

Sam shook himself away from some distraction and looked back to the paper in his hands. "Yeah, look at this." He handed it to Dean, pointing to an article on the edge of the page.

Dean skimmed through it, "...quiet neighborhood... shocking.. blah blah blah... here we go; 'the confrontation early on Wednesday morning ended gruesomely with the man's death. His son has been arrested and charged for allegedly beheading his father..." Dean raised his eyebrows and looked over to Sam "Beheading? Really?"

Sam nodded "Read on."

"Ahhh... 'The suspect, Thomas Cameron... has a long standing mental illness that family and friends believe was the cause of the attack.'... Thomas Cameron... Why does that name sound familiar?"

"He was a colleague of Dad's. He worked with us on a few cases when we were kids."

"Yeah, I think I remember; 'bout medium height, dark hair... bit of an affinity for knives?"

"That could be more then a few people we know... but yes I think you've got the one. And get this; a bit further on there's a quote from his mother saying that Tom was yelling something about monsters before the decapitation."

"So what, you think that his Dad was a vamp? Or a leviathan?"

"Maybe."

"Well what are we supposed to do about it? The cops have him. We can't exactly turn up and prove him innocent; he probably _did_ behead the guy."

"I know, but the dude saved our lives more than once Dean, I just think we should go check it out. I mean, if it was a Leviathan then there's probably something big going on, and if it was a vamp there might be a nest to look in to. Its only a 4 or 5 hour drive."

"Okay fine, lets do this, where are we headed?"

"Sacramento city."

"I'm driving."

. ~ ~ ~ ~

The door of the lift opened with a ping and three suited figures walked out of it into a long hallway. A woman lead the way and beside her two men exchanged a tired glance as she started to question them again.

"I don't mean go on about this, but why are the FBI interested in this case? It's pretty cut and dry; there are a number of witnesses and a DNA encrusted murder weapon. The SFPD can handle it."

The taller of the two suited men took the question.

"We think it might be related to with another case we've been working on, there are a number of similarities…

"Like what?"

"We can't discuss it at this time."

"You're kidding right? My team and I are working this case, we have the right to know any facts you have connected to it."

"Sorry."

"So, what, you think this psycho might have killed someone else?"

"Uh, something like that."

She decided to let the issue drop as they walked through a door into the morgue.

The shorter of the men took advantage of the pause to move the conversation back to the facts of the case. "So, the body?"

"It's in 26."

She walked over and pulled open a freezer drawer, reaching over to unzip the black body bag. Sure enough, a head unconnected from its body sat just above its decapitated corpse.

"Lovely."

The woman raised an eyebrow and was about to comment when the taller man took her attention "Ah, was there anything... odd... about the body?"

"And by odd you mean...?"

The darker haired man answered "Not normal, peculiar, different from the usual?"

"You mean apart from the decapitation?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Not that I've been made aware of."

"No, uh, black goo or anything at the crime scene? Or on the body?"

"Not that I saw... Black goo?"

The men exchanged a glance "Just something from a previous case."

"Alright then."

Silence ensued.

"Could I have a moment to talk to my colleague please Agent Skiles?"

"Sure. I have other cases to get to. I'll leave you two to it."

The agent turned to leave.

"Oh one more thing" The lighter haired man paused her. "The suspect - Thomas Cameron?"

"He's upstairs. I'll get him ready to talk to you."

"Thanks."

He turned back to the body as she left the room.

"So, what do you think Dean?"

"I don't know. No black goo, and if he was leviathan his head would have reattached by now." Pulling a plastic glove onto his hand he carefully lifted back the top lip of the unattached head and pressed on the gum. He looked up at his brother when nothing happened. "Not a vamp either."

"So what? Some other monster? Beheading works on a lot of things."

"Maybe. OR this isn't one of our things and good-old Tom just murdered his Dad for some normal reason."

"Normal reason?"

"Whatever people usually get murdered for... I don't know."

"Well we should still go talk to him." Sam frowned down at the body, rolling his eyes over it before pausing as he noticed something "Hey Dean, look at this..." He reached down to pull back the edge of the man's shirt sleeve, revealing a ring of symbols burned into the flesh around his wrist.

"What is that?"

"I don't know... but it looks familiar..."

"Some sort of binding spell? Like with you and Meg back in the good old days?"

Sam didn't appreciate the association "Maybe..."

They both spun around when they heard the doors open behind them.

"Agent Skiles?"

"I'm afraid I won't be able to let you talk to Cameron today"

"Agent, this is an FBI case, we need access, we have lead here"

"You can have all the lead you want, but you still can't talk to him. He's gone."

_- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
To be continued..._  
Next: '_Well we should've seen that coming.'  
_  
Author's Note: _So this is a story I started not long after I first watched the S7 episodes it is set between. Being a SPN latecommer, that was around christmas 2012 for me. Then I forgot about it. Then remembered, then forgot again. But now I've broken the barrier and begun to put it up! I have most of it written, so expect updates every week at least, and look forward to monsters and a little brotherly angst along the way.  
Anyways... Hope you're enjoying it so far...!  
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	2. The Victims

"Well we should've seen that coming."

The brothers walked out onto the street outside the SFPD offices.

"Yeah well how are we going to find him now Sam?"

"I don't know, but it's what we would have done."

"Exactly, so if he's got a head on his shoulders he'll be out of here."

"Not if he doesn't think he killed it."

"Which he might of;which would mean that we don't actually have anything to do here."

"Well how about we at least find out what this thing was and make sure it's dead before we skip town."

"Fine. I'll head to the crime scene."

"Good. I'm going to go talk to Skiles and find out if there were any more deaths that could be related."

"Good luck with that. I'm sure there are a whole stack of beheadings just waiting to be discovered"

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother, shaking his head slightly as he turned to goback inside. He was already sat at a computer, a pile of files to one side, and deeply absorbed in his research by the time Dean had started the Impala.

... ... ...

Cameron's house - well his parents house - was nice enough. Neat garden, clean white walls, and uncluttered verandah. The police tape did little to improve the aesthetics but instinctively ignoring the keep-out signs, Dean quickly made his way to the front door. It didn't take him long to pick the lock and get inside.

The site of beheading was still very obvious; at the bottom of the stairs blood had splattered dramatically across the pale cream walls. Definitely not leviathan. He pulled out his EMF reader, nothing. He sniffed around for sulfur. Nothing. Kept his eyes peeled for ectoplasm. Nothing.  
Great.

His phone rung.

"Hey Sam, tell me you have something cause I've got nada here."

"No luck?"

"Nothing."

"Well I had a look over Cameron's interview, he didn't say much, but I did find something. There's been a string of deaths over the last few months that I think are all linked to whatever this thing is."

"I'm assuming they weren't all beheadings?"

"No, a few murders, mostly suicides, but listen to this - before every death family and friends reported a huge behavioral change. All these people just suddenly went bad; drinking, drugs, theft, violence, all sorts of other felonies. But originally they were good people, loved by all etc etc, a few of them did charity work. These guys didn't even have parking tickets. "

"So good turned evil? Sounds like demon possession."

"Yeah."

"But there's no sulfur Sammy. And Cameron's smart, he's a good hunter, he would have sorted a demon out easy."

"It's something to start with anyway."

"Any other leads?"

"Yes. Two cases. The first is the case right before Cameron, this girl - Janie Erwin - goes unexpectedly off the deep end and two weeks later kills herself. Jumped off a bridge. I checked up on Cameron's dad and the day after Janie died he got into a fist fight in the street, _in the middle of the day_. First time he's ever been in any sort of fight.

"Okay, what's the other?"

"I think this might be the next victim. Dove Anderson. Missing person report by herb housemate states that she started acting strangely around the time of the beheading and then disappeared a few days ago."

"Well let's go have a talk to them shall we?"

"You're closer to Dove's house than I am."

"Okay. Lets do this."

... ... ...

"I didn't think I'd get anyone helping. Especially the FBI. The police told me they couldn't get involved until she'd been gone for weeks."

Dove's roommate was a quite girl. Long light hair framed a round pretty face and light eyes were creased with worry. She was dressed for home, comfortable pants and t-shirt and an old hoodie which she kept shrugging forward a little self-consciously. She lead Dean towards the lounge, tidying what she could along the way.

"We think that Dove may be involved in a case we're working on."

Her head shot up. "Wait, how?"

"I can't tell you that. Sorry."

"Oh." She paused and then turned back to sweeping things off the couch and coffee table while Dean looked around the room. "Sorry about the mess, It's not usually like this, I've been a bit out of sorts since Dove... left."

Dean turned from the shelf of photos he was eyeing, holding one of the frames in his hand. In it a woman with long dark hair smiled brightly, arm around her similarly grinning roommate. "This her?"

"Yeah."

"So what happened? You said in the missing person's report that she started acting strangely?" he motioned for her to sit down and made himself comfortable on the chair opposite.

"Yes. Dove is... Dove is usually the sweetest person. She never has a mean word to say, she'd never do anything wrong, she looked after everything, looks after me... I can't think of anyone that would say a word against her... Uh, anyway, she came home one day just, different. I though something must have happened but she wouldn't talk about it. She just got... mean. When I tried to get her to open up after a few days she... well she didn't take it very well." She looked away. Dean followed her gaze to the next room. The formerly glass panes of a bookcase had been smashed out, a few shards still stuck in their corners, a few panels cracked but not quite shattered.

"What did she do?"

"Um, she threw some stuff around, broke a few things, yelled a lot."

"And?" he could tell there was something else.

She squirmed a little in her seat. "Uh, she hit me."

"What?"

"It's completely unlike her, it was like she was someone else entirely. Nothing like that has ever happened..." Dean noticed her unconsciously reaching to her left shoulder, her jumper moving a bit so that he could see the edge of a large dark purple bruise.

"You didn't mention it in the missing persons report."

"It wasn't her, so no I didn't. Anyway, I though mentioning a fight would make them less likely to look for her."

"This might seem like an odd question, but have you noticed anything else unusual around the house? Uh, cold spots or bad smells, flickering lights? Anything at all?"

"Not that I can think of."

"And what about Dove, did you notice if she had any unusual marks on her? Burns maybe?"

She frowned, but then paused in thought a moment "I do remember noticing that her wrists were quite red... She said it was a rash, wouldn't let me see."

"How long have you known Dove?"

A small smile came over her face "I've known her since school and we've been living together since university... God it has to be 15 years or something now."

"Is there anywhere she might go? Does she have other friends or family she would visit?"?

"There is one place, her parents have an apartment they rent out in the city, I'm not sure if anyone is living there at the moment. But I did talk to the receptionist, he said he hadn't seen her around."

"I'll check it out. Thank you." He stood up to leave.

"Thank you, I hope you can bring her back."

"Uh, we'll do our best. Let us know if you hear from her or find out anything about where she is." Dean handed her a small white business card which she took haltingly. "And look out for yourself okay?"

She nodded.

Outside Dean grabbed his phone.

... ... ...

Sam stood at the door of an old house, the increasing wind playing havoc with his hair. He held his phone to his ear as he stared up at the storm clouds that were quickly building overhead. "Okay Dean, I'm almost done here... No, not yet, we should do some research first…. I'll meet you outside." He hung up and turned back to the older man waiting for him in the doorway, Janie's father. "Sorry, that was the other agent on the case. I just had one last question; you said Janie just came home different one day, do you have any idea where she went that day?"

"She just went out... Like any other day; we dropped her off at school and then she walked home."

"Thanks for all your help."

"No problem. I hope I was useful. Janie was a good kid, just a good, happy kid. I don't understand it."

Sam smiled sadly at him and turned to leave, but paused as the wind suddenly calmed. He looked up again and noticed that the clouds that had been threatening a storm had abruptly begun to abate. Sam frowned at them slightly.

A voice behind him answered his expression.

"We've had a lot of crazy weather recently. Sunshine, then rain, then sun, then storming and then windy... Just the time of year I suppose."

"Yeah… probably."

_- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
To be continued..._  
Next: _'The Motel Room'  
_  
Author's Note: _Well it's never just the weather is it? Hope you're enjoying the story so far...  
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End file.
